


Fair and Balanced

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 17:22:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5635420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someday, Innes will learn to appreciate his own accomplishments without measuring himself against other, nonspecific princes of certain neighboring countries.</p>
<p>Today is not that day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fair and Balanced

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for tumblr user siraranispleased for the Nagamas Gift Exchange.

It’s not that Innes lacks pride in his heritage.  He is a prince of Frelian blood, trained practically from the cradle to protect his people, to think first of his people, to rule them with an elegantly gloved yet compassionate fist.  Since he was old enough to understand what such duties meant, he has tried to _embody_ Frelia, to sense its needs as though they were his own, and to make suggestions regarding said needs before even his father thought of them.

He loves his father, and would die protecting him if the need was there, but there is still a part of Innes that yearns for King Hayden to step down from the throne, so that Innes can take on the role that he feels he is ready for.

So it’s not that Innes lacks pride in his heritage -- it's just --

Nidhogg rests uselessly in Innes’s elegantly gloved grip as the prince watches Eirika _and her brother_ crisscross the battlefield, mopping up the last of the revenant horde.

Without Innes’s assistance. 

On glowing, supernaturally manifested war horses.

Innes’s elegantly gloved hand clenches into a fist around Nidhogg as he stifles the briefly entertained impulse to snap the damn thing over his knee.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, what little remains of his sniffling child-self thinks: _this isn’t fair, not at all_ .  And while Innes discarded the concept of _fairness_ long before reaching adulthood, he can’t help but wonder if the concept of _competitive balance_ ever so much as occurred to his forebears, when they created these shining weapons to combat the teeming darkness in their time.

When Innes focuses once more on the battlefield, it is to see that it has ceased to be one: the fight is over, and the Renaitian twins now ride in parallel in the direction of camp.  On their gleaming white destriers, with their sacred weapons held in opposite hands, the twins make imperfect mirror images of one another.  Eirika’s long hair dances in the wind, stirring Innes’s usual desire to run his fingers through it.  Ephraim, too, is the perfect picture of a hero as he bounces in the saddle, stirring Innes’s usual desire to remove the elegant, custom-tailored glove from his dominant hand and punch the prince of Renais full in the face.

Innes knows, with the sniper’s precision that he has worked to cultivate in all aspects of his life, that he has slain fourteen revenants today.  He knows, intellectually, that that is fourteen people, or perhaps even fourteen families, that will not have to face the threat of death at the hands of the shambling undead.  He has done his people proud, and his father or his sister would tell him the same in a heartbeat.

And yet, Innes knows with that very same precision that Ephraim has slain _forty-seven_ revenants, and somehow, next to that, Innes’s hypothetical fourteen spared families do not seem to matter quite as much.  

Perhaps he shouldn’t have given up his training with the lance so quickly.  It isn’t like Tana _needs_ Vidofnir.  

Then again, by the time he reaches Ephraim’s level of skill with a spear, the war might be over.  

Later, in the privacy of his tent, Innes will realize that he is being silly, and that he needs to get his priorities in order.  For now, however, he fantasizes about knocking the other prince off his fancy magic horse with a blunt-tipped arrow.  It’s not like the fall would kill him.

Probably.


End file.
